Recently YRC began transitioning customers from legacy base rates (tariffs) under the old Yellow and Roadway banners.  This change makes sense since Yellow and Roadway were combined into what is now YRC.  Many shippers probably didn’t see this change, especially if they weren’t under a contract.  A contract should not be confused to a pricing agreement or a published tariff that refers to a set of base rates.  Such base rates can change at any time, whereas a properly structured contract can lock specific pricing in place for a period of time.

Anyway, I believe that this move by YRC makes sense from a practicality standpoint.  There isn’t any need to maintain two sets of rates when a single company has emerged from two.  However, rest assured that the new YRC base rates, if they adopted only one is the higher of the two.  If they created a new tariff altogether, it likely will be higher for most shippers.  The statement from YRC’s web-site mentioned that no discounts or minimums change.  They don’t need to change if the base rate is higher.

At least YRC informed the public of this move.  A year ago, when FedEx Freight consolidated FedEx National into a single company and network, FedEx quietly retired the FedEx National base rates and quietly transitioned everyone to the FedEx Freight base rates which resulted in a hidden increase of approximately 9.5%

No matter what, these tariffs and base rates are complex and tricky.  Shippers need assistance to figure out their net impact.  With ridiculous discounts, ever-growing accessorial and surcharges, the costs of shipping keep increasing and the routing decisions all that more important.